Archive for March, 2009

Hey, I just noticed that someone in Japan blogged about Mach Dice. I can only read a bit of Japanese, but I think they liked it. Here’s a Google translated version. It kinda makes me think I ought to attempt a Japanese version of my Mach Dice demo video. I mean, I made one in English and people liked it, so doing one in Japanese would help sales in Japan, right? Sure, they speak a different language and the food might be a little different. But I figure, we’re all the same deep down inside.

One of the more commonly requested features I get for Mach Dice is to have actual rounded six-sided dice. I’d given it some thought but since six-sided dice are only one of the many dice sizes available, it wasn’t high on the priority list. But Boom Dice is an actual game that only uses six sided dice so I wanted to give it a shot.

So what all does it take to implement rounded six-sided dice in Open GL? Well, Open GL doesn’t come with a CG modeler or anything like that. You have to type in all the vertices by hand unless you have some 3rd party tool that lets you import models from a 3D package like Maya. Since I don’t have either, it meant going about it the old fashioned way — figuring things out with pencil and paper.

First of all, you have to draw your model. In my case, it’s a cube with extra vertices at the corners and edges that will later be pushed in to look “rounder”. Second, you’ll have to number all the vertices. Finally, you’ll have to connect them all together in a bunch of lists to create polygons. Oh, you’ll also have to deal with texture coordinates, normals, and figure out their actual positions in 3D. All that stuff isn’t too bad when you’re dealing with simple shapes like cubes or spheres. But you can sort of see why my apps don’t have animated 3D characters in them…

It took all Sunday but I finally managed to get my new app, Boom Dice, submitted to the app store! Hopefully, it’ll get approved later this week. Also, check this out. The makers of the iPhone game, Aurora Feint, have developed a social gaming platform called Open Feint for the iPhone and I’m one of the launch titles.

What does this mean? I’m not really sure. But I’ve got a button in the game that launches their dashboard and you can do things like talk to other people playing any of the other games in the Open Feint network. Eventually, it’ll feature things like achievements and leaderboards.

Okay, now I’ve got to catch up on some sleep and eventually talk to some people about getting my motorcycle repaired… I’ll have a demo video for Boom Dice on Wednesday.

I think I still can’t quite talk about the NDA stuff (although there might be a press release out there, I’m not sure), but I can at least talk a bit about the app that I’m working on. I’m making a dice game which uses my physics engine from Mach Dice. It’s a simple game where you roll dice and get points based on how many treasures (in this case, copper coins) come up. You can keep on rolling to try to collect more treasures, but if you ever reveal bombs without any treasures, you’ll lose all your points for the round.

One of my goals as an iPhone apps developer is to try to take advantage of the device to do things that you can’t do otherwise. That’s why I did that whole virtual 3D display using the tilt sensor for Mach Dice. So you might be thinking, “Gee, Mach, that’s great and all, but the game you described sounds like just another game you could play with dice in the real world. Why program it for the iPhone?”

So, something really cool happened last Tuesday. Only … I had to sign an NDA as part of it. But I should be able to talk about it later this week. What I can say is that I’m postponing work on the app that I was working on and now I’m frantically working on what was going to be my third app. Also, I have to get it done by Thursday. Umm … yeah. I guess I’d better get back to it.

Oh hey — another thing you all may or may not have noticed: most of my posts for the past several months have been posted at 6am. Am I just that super dilligent? Nope. WordPress has this cool feature called “delayed publishing” that lets me write posts in advance and then they’ll automatically get posted when I specify.

The only drawback to writing something in advance is that there’s a chance that the post might become obsolete by some late-breaking news like, say, a comment on an earlier post on your blog or a motorcycle accident. Fortunately, there’s always the edit button…

Anyways, you know how you’re watching a movie and the guy says, “I’m only two days away from retirement!” and then BAM! he gets blow’ed up or something? Well, last night, just a couple days before my big vacation, I pull out of the parking lot at work on my motorcycle and ride along the same street I always ride down as a car comes up to a stop sign to my right — only, the other car doesn’t stop and makes a left turn right into me.

I swerved to try to avoid, he slammed into me, and I went flying through the air to land on sweet, sweet pavement. My bike’s pretty messed up, possibly unrideable. But fortunately, I always wear a helmet and a very rugged full-body suit so I was able to walk (well, hobble) away.

Sadly, my helmet did not survive the impact. (You’re really not supposed to wear a helmet beyond one accident and that white gash on the side of the helmet is where the asphalt said hello to my head.) So this post is dedicated to you, Neko Helmet! You served me well, protecting my precious noggin so that I might live to code iPhone apps another day.

I don’t know if any of you have noticed or not, but I’m trying to post every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. That’s because I’ve heard that people value consistency over quality, which is fortunate for me since I’m not exactly sparkling with gems of wisdom here. Then again, it’s not like I have a whole lot to say, either.

So does it matter if I post three times a week or not? If not, maybe I’ll drop down to once or twice a week. Whaddaya say? Inquiring mind wants to know…

As long time readers know (hi, Mom!), I’m not a full-time iPhone app developer. It’s just something I do as a hobby. Lately, my full time job has been keeping me pretty busy so I haven’t had as much time for hobbies as I’d like. But only for one more week….

After that, I’m on vacation for three months! I don’t have any definite plans, but it’d be nice to watch a few movies, play some games, travel somewhere with some nice snorkeling, do some writing, draw a bit, and — oh yeah, hopefully work on a couple iPhone apps. =)